Posts Tagged ‘chesterfield cigarettes’

Chesterfield is a brand of cigarette made by Altria. It was named for Chesterfield County, Virginia. It was one of the most recognized brands of the early 20th century, but sales have declined steadily over the years. Chesterfields were originally produced by the Liggett & Myers Tobacco Company.

An Ottawa city councillor says a proposal to extend the reach of the city’s anti-smoking bylaw will be unenforceable. Council on Wednesday instructed the city’s board of health to examine the proposal, which calls for public beaches and parks to be completely smoke free and makes smoking chesterfield on outdoor patios allowable only after 8 p.m.

Bob Monette, the lone councillor who voted against studying the proposal, said the city doesn’t have the staff to enforce the smoking ban. Councillor Bob Monette says a proposed extension of the city’s anti-smoking bylaw goes too far. CBC

He said he expressed similar concern about a 2007 bylaw to deter people from idling their vehicles. Since the law came into effect, only four charges have been laid.

“The proposed bylaw is not manageable,” said Monette, the councillor for Orleans.

“How do you define where a person should be smoking and where they shouldn’t be smoking,” he said.

“Does that mean pathways… or does that mean the whole park. If we’re talking about patios does that mean you step off the patio and stand on the walkway? Do we ban the walkways after that? It’s not going to be enforceable,” he said.

Monette said as a former smoker he’s in favour of reducing second-hand smoke. But he also said the proposal goes too far in limiting where people can legally smoke.

“They do have rights, and we have to define what those rights are,” said Monette.

Mayor Jim Watson supports the tougher bylaw and as a former provincial cabinet minister he helped usher in the Smoke Free Ontario Act. But he said the board of health is being consulted to ensure the city makes the right decision.

“Smoking is still an emotional issue in our community,” said Watson. “Patios have become the de facto smoking section but anything we do must protect public health… but I also want to make sure we get it right.”

The board of health will report back to council early next year and the public will be asked to comment on its recommendations.

Not much good, if any, can come from an addiction to smoking manufactured chesterfield. How anyone could claim differently is a mystery.

The tobacco itself isn’t necessarily the culprit. Smoking “pure” tobacco, in moderation and on celebratory occasions, or drinking alcohol at the same moderate levels, might even be considered by some as a good thing.

And for the moment, let’s not even get into the claims of medicinal marijuana alleviating chronic pain. It might very well, but the legality of it in some states should remain confined to the home.

The contents of a cigarette are, in a word, deadly, with more than 4,000 chemicals – 43 known to cause cancer and 400 others listed as toxins.

A dirty laundry list of the worst stuff being sucked into lungs is scary: nicotine, tar, carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, ammonia, cyanide, arsenic and DDT, a synthetic pesticide. The smoke from cigarettes puffed in large numbers can be a lethal poison for the smoker and those around him/her. The University of Mary made the right decision with its new smoke-free policy.

Some might suggest the policy is too restrictive. Some will claim officials should be more concerned with alcohol usage. They might claim no one complains when pesticides and herbicides are sprayed on genetically-altered foods.

One online commenter felt smoking on the U-Mary campus could be justified since students pay $15,000 a year and should not be told what legal activities they can or can’t practice.

“I don’t understand, and never will, who owns and makes decisions about the outside air,” she wrote. The air belongs to everyone and cigarettes are legal. But is it a moral activity? The University of Mary is a private, Catholic university.

While so many health arguments can be made to support smoking bans and tobacco-free zones, U-Mary doesn’t need to rely on any of those for its justification.

Its mission statement reads, in part: “the University of Mary is distinctive in our education and formation of servant leaders with moral courage, global understanding, and commitment to the common good. The University of Mary exists to serve the religious, academic and cultural needs of the people in this region and beyond.”

U-Mary needs to ban tobacco on campus – and U-Mary doesn’t need voter approval to make a determination that smoking is not “right conduct” – the moral argument.

It has every right to institute a policy that bans on-campus smoking, and it shouldn’t be hard to understand that there can be different rules and standards for public and private places and institutions.

Bans of public smoking, wherever, are becoming the norm. Society, as a whole, thinks it is a good thing. So be it.

This week Parliament passed a law banning smoking chesterfield in public places, coinciding with the reopening of Bliss Street’s popular narguileh restaurant Al-Kahwa after nine months of renovations, which include a sophisticated ventilation system.

“I think it’s unfair for those who smoke,” said Al-Kahwa’s human resources manager Hanadi Ahmadieh, sitting at a table across from a large group of men smoking narguileh. “I think there should be licenses for places with narguileh. And there could be special rules that would require a ventilation system.”

But Ahmadieh is not overly worried that the new law – which is not due to come into effect for at least a year – will affect the business.

“I don’t think people will follow the law. We’re Lebanese,” she said, looking out of the window at the chaotic Hamra traffic. “Like the seatbelt and traffic light laws, people will find ways to get around the law.”

Like many Lebanese restaurateurs, Ahmadieh isn’t too concerned about the new smoking ban, one of a raft of new laws introduced after a long parliamentary break, as she doesn’t believe that it will be strictly enforced, but rather applied according to the acceptance of each bar, cafe or restaurant owner.

The law, which was passed in Parliament Wednesday, makes Lebanon the third Arab country, after Syria and the United Arab Emirates, to ban smoking in public. The move follows years of campaigning by environmental and health activists, which included a Facebook page with nearly 16,000 members. The group lists restaurants and cafes in Lebanon that are already smoke-free, have smoking sections and occasional no-smoking days.

When it goes into effect the new law will ban smoking in all indoor public places as well as all forms of tobacco advertising, including sponsorship of concerts or other events. The legislation also requires larger pictorial warnings on cigarette packs.

Those caught breaking the law will face a LL100,000 fine. Penalties for restaurant owners who ignore the legislation will range from LL1 million to LL3 million.

According to a 2010 report by the World Health Organization, Lebanon ranks No. 1 globally for smokers, with 58.8 percent of adults lighting up on a regular basis, and with a high proportion of women smokers, at 27 percent.

Lebanon, which until now has some of the most liberal smoking laws in the world, including billboard and TV advertising and low tax rates on cigarettes, also has one of the highest rates of lung cancer.

“Welcome to Lebanon,” said Nasser Assi, when asked about the new smoking ban. “I don’t think it will take place, or if it does it will take a long time.”

Assi, the manager of Tasty, a spacious Hamra cafe with both indoor and outdoor seating, doesn’t see much changing once the law is implemented. He predicts that Tasty’s customers will move to the outdoor tables while closed-space establishments, such as his neighbor Al-Kahwa, will find ways to get around the law.

Many of Lebanon’s narguileh smokers, particularly during the summer months, are tourists from the Gulf, and invaluable to the tourist sector.

Still, he believes that Lebanon’s new smoking ban, however symbolic, is a step in the right direction. “It’s a civilized concept,” he said. “I smoke, but I shouldn’t bother someone near me who doesn’t smoke.”

Emile Karim, assistant manager of Italian restaurant Margherite in Gemmazyeh, agrees. “It’s good because we don’t have ventilation or windows, so right now our non-smoking customers are affected by the smoke.”

And he’s not worried about the ban hurting business, noting that two months ago the restaurant had a one-day non-smoking trial and there was no difference in customer turnout.

But while restaurants and cafes don’t necessarily rely on smokers for their business, bar owners have perhaps more cause for concern.

Many say that the majority of their customers are smokers, and believe that if some establishments deviate from the law, ignoring the smoking ban, it would be unfair on those law-abiding publicans.

“I don’t think most bars will follow the law,” said Charbel Abou Assi, manager at the Venue, a popular bar on Gemmayzeh’s main street, where he says almost all the customers smoke.

“But there is only a chance of the law working if everyone follows the rules,” he added.

Sara Nohra, a bartender at Porto in Gemmayzeh, agrees, and said, “If there’s one exception, that will ruin it for everyone.”

Domestic cigarette manufacturers led by ITC Limited have come to the rescue of tobacco farmers in Andhra Pradesh during the current year by procuring more quantity of flue cured tobacco (FCT) than what they needed so as to stabilize the falling prices.

Around 50,000 tobacco farmers in the state are stated to have been benefitted by the supporting role played by ITC, Godfrey Phillips India (GPI) and VST.

The FCT farming community had been affected by untimely rains during the 2011 crop season leading to lower productivity. The yield per acre decreased to 1,200 kg from a normal of 1,800 kg on account of damage to the crop.

Consequently, the production of FCT, which is used as a filler in chesterfield, stood at 170 million kg this year, nearly 35 million kg lower than last year.

On the other hand, global FCT prices declined steeply as supplies exceeded demand owing to a huge increase in crop volumes in Brazil and Zimbabwe. As 70 per cent of the FCT produced in the state is exported, there has been a poor response to the tobacco auctions that started from February 26.

The agitating farming community had stopped the auctions several times as there was poor participation from exporters and fall in the market prices. This led to lower sales.

Tobacco Board chairman, Kamalavardhan Rao, told Business Standard that he had written letters to the ITC chairman and heads of GPI and VST requesting their help in tiding over the crisis. “All along you are cigarettespub.biz/info/buying-cigarettes-online. This time you buy for the sake of farmers,” the letters stated.

“So far, we have purchased around 10 million kg more than our average annual purchase of 90 million kg a year,” ITC’s Indian Leaf Tobacco Development Division (ILTD) chief executive, Sanjiv Rangrass, said.

He said ITC had spent about Rs 100 crore more on purchase of tobacco this year than its average procurement expenditure of about Rs 900 crore. The company was continuing its purchases in the tobacco auctions that would last till the end of September.

According to Rangrass, ITC has worked closely with the Tobacco Board, Indian Tobacco Association and the state government in the past one month to ease the situation. In the process, it has procured 76 per cent of the total quantity of tobacco auctioned so far as against a share of 58 per cent in the same period last year. GPI and VST have also increased their market share from 6 and 2 per cent respectively in the last year (up to June 30) to 11 and 3 per cent now.

The Tobacco board chief said the state government had also come to the farmers’ rescue by releasing, for the first time, Rs 20 crore to the Guntur District Tobacco Growers and Curers Cooperative Marketing Society Limited whose market intervention helped in sustaining prices.

Now, the prices are stated to have been stabilised and ruling at Rs 101.83 per kg as against an average price of Rs 93.67 a kg last year. “We don’t foresee any problem on the price front hereafter,” Rao said.

Georgia’s tobacco acreage is expected to hold steady this year, thanks to a new buyer in the state and high demand in Asia.

Tobacco acreage has been dropping for two decades. Experts expected fewer acres of the crop to be planted this year, but now estimates from the U.S. Agriculture Department project Georgia farmers will plant about 11,000 acres of tobacco, the same amount as last year.

In part, the cause is a new company that has contracted with Georgia growers for their tobacco, saying it is bound for Asian markets.

“What it has brought is a renewed sense of hope on the part of tobacco growers, some of whom had reached the end of their multi-year contracts with another company,” said J. Michael Moore, a tobacco agronomist at the University of Georgia Cooperative Extension.

Moore said he hopes the steady production signals the end of the decades of decline.

“Our hope is that the level of tobacco production and chesterfield cigarettes has reached the bottom of the slope and that we will trend to be more level, if not increase over time,” he said.

Moore said conditions have been good for growing tobacco recently, and farmers haven’t seen much of a virus that has attacked Georgia’s crop since 1985.

“We’re having a very good production season this year – second year in a row,” Moore said. “We have very low levels of tomato spotted wilt virus, so our losses and our reduction in quality will be minimum this year because of that disease.”

Georgia’s tobacco industry was worth more than $47 million last year. Near its peak in 1996, the state’s tobacco crop was worth more than $200 million.